


Ambition

by swinchests



Series: Coming To [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, One-Sided Enjolras/Grantaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 06:45:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6108409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swinchests/pseuds/swinchests
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire planned on accomplishing nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ambition

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this took long enough.

A better man might have considered that this was a second chance to accomplish something he had not in the life before. Grantaire— who planned on accomplishing nothing— saw another few decades to experience the innovation of bars.

Were there any chance in hell of reuniting with his friends, he hoped to find Enjolras first. In fact, if there were no chance in hell of reuniting with his friends, he would have at least wanted to find _him_. The thought of their once-leader was stranger for him that it had been before; he held the cold reverence heavier, a block of ice on his shoulders. The feeling was unlike any sort of regret he’d felt— and Grantaire was a connoisseur. He had given his life for someone who, if he was alive again, may not even remember.          

Quite rude, when you think about it.     

His first impulse was to find some way to get to Paris. He didn’t know why; he had no plan for himself if he got there, anyway. Intuition, a speck of something that was nearly ambition (but was not; let the distinction be clear), beckoned, but he was helpless to follow. This new face had grown up American. He was not even sure he still spoke French. If he’d had any money to his name, he would have gone without a second thought. But _Ivan_ (as he was called in this resurrection) didn’t have any money. All he had were some paintings that he’d never sold— paintings of blond hair, and red flags, and an insurrection that was too useless to be remembered. His friends died forty years— nearly double their lifetimes— before France was truly freed. What was the purpose of that?        

On this note, with two lives full of bad memories in his head, too much information about the universe and nothing to be done about it, Grantaire committed to drinking himself into a lifelong stupor. So long as he would be provided with a new life, and another and another, he saw no good reason to salvage this wasted one. Why not wait until he could start afresh?

Why not get his fresh start now?

There was a hole in the wall in Red Bank, Tennessee, called The Howling Dog. Here, with a fake I.D. and a wide, confident grin, Grantaire had curled up when he was in his first semester of art school. It was there, between busted floorboards and rusted stools, that he had made his dwelling. The bartender there was Tony, a fat man who wore a fat ring on his right hand and a gold chain outside of his shirt. There was some sort of irony there, in that chain, but even Grantaire, with his bladelike vernacular, was never sure what it was. Tony was always willing to turn a blind eye to drunken speeches, specifically when Grantaire took to yammering about religion (or rather, shouting at a man who wore a crucifix and a wedding band and had a whore on each arm). He turned a blind eye, too, when on his twenty-second birthday he preached mythology into several short-lived pints. He gave a long lecture one night about every incarnation of Vishnu that he could remember. The next, he raged about the fallacy of the ones the Greeks worshipped. It was only when he started talking about death— how not even and dying was an escape from suffering— that Tony dragged him to the threshold of the door, and told him to calm down or get out.        

“Where do you expect me to go?”    

“Doesn’t matter. You upset the patrons, you cost me money. I put up with a lot of shit, man.” Tony’s voice was enough of a growl to stop Grantaire’s drooling slur in its tracks. He sighed, a pale tongue touching cracking lips. “Look. You’ve been around here way too much… for way too long. You’re a good guy when you’re clean, Ivan. If you really feel like all of this… then you need some help.”

“I don’t need help.” Was he supposed to get a shrink? What doctor would listen to him without sending him away to a ward? Maybe, though… maybe he was lucky, and he was crazy, after all. He wasn’t, he knew. He was so sure of himself that even his inner monologue had changed to a new pseud. That when Tony called him _Ivan,_ he nearly forgot who that was. He pushed his hands against the brick wall, steadying himself. If he were totally honest… “I need to get to France.”       

“Whatever, then. Just quit the philosophy lessons in here.”           

The list of things Tony did not say outnumbered the things that he did. He said get help. He did not say that he was crazy. He did not shove him into a taxi to be taken home— sent to bed like a child. An idea went from Grantaire’s mind through Ivan’s mouth into Tony’s ears… and between the three of them, no one had shot it down. No one had told him no. When was the last time he hadn’t been told to sit down, to shut up, go away? Through his time as a student, through meetings where Enjolras’ raging was better than his… 

“Alright?” 

“You’re right.” It wasn’t as if he Paris would lock him out, if he got there. It was not as if he could not get anywhere he wanted to, if he tried hard enough. It would be there when he arrived, whether he had the right means or not. It was not like he had someone here to stop him— why was he stopping himself? 

He could finish something. For the first time in two lifetimes, he could _do_ something. 

“You’re right.” He muttered it again, and the slur seemed to disappear from his voice. He gave a wobbly nod, and a lazy smile— his face pulling strangely. The laugh that came next was raw and hoarse.

“Are you going home?” Tony called as he brushed past him.

“I’m going to Paris!” He laughed harder— yes, going home, _going home._ “I’m going to Paris!"


End file.
